Wednesday, June 29, 2005

I've been running NewsGator Outlook Edition alongside FeedDemon while testing the sync features, and it's impressive - read/unread/deleted status of individual items is synched with NewsGator Online, so you can access your feeds from any computer you like without duplication.

Greg Reinacker has more details about the new release. My congrats to the team for the great work!

Monday, June 27, 2005

The big announcement at last week's Gnomedex was the news that Microsoft plans to bake RSS into Longhorn. In just a minute I'm going to ask you to blog about this, but this requires some background first. I know this is a lengthy post, but the fact that you're reading it means this is important to you, so please bear with me.

Microsoft's plans are two-fold: to extend RSS so that it handles lists, and to provide a common feed subscription list and data store that can be shared among applications running on the same desktop. I believe these are both good things, and I've offered my hand to Microsoft to help them develop these in a way that benefits everyone.

In other words, I'm going to trust Microsoft. I believe companies - like people - can change, and I've seen plenty of signs that Microsoft has indeed changed. Unlike Google, Microsoft has joined the conversation via blogs and RSS. Hell, the fact that Scoble still has his job suggests that they're a changed company!

So, I'm going to take them at their word that they'll develop RSS support in a way that's open, and I hope that I'm not singing "Won't Get Fooled Again" a year or two down the road. But by trusting Microsoft, I'm also trusting them with your attention, and I don't want to speak for you without explaining what I believe this is about, and then hearing your opinion on it.

What was interesting about Microsoft's announcement was that they didn't talk much about search, which is surprising given the huge competition they face from Google and Yahoo. In my opinion, a big part of the growing interest in RSS is about how search can be improved by watching what you read via RSS.

One of the most powerful things about RSS is that it breaks information into individual items - bite-size chunks, if you like - which theoretically enables tools and services to find out what you're paying attention to. The more that's known about what you're paying attention to, the more relevant information the service can automatically provide for you (and the more irrelevant information the service can automatically discard).

This may sound Orwellian to some, but it's actually very useful, and it's already widely-used. Think of the books that Amazon recommends to you based on previous purchases, or the DVDs that Netflix recommends based on past choices. They do that by looking at what you've paid attention to in the past. I like this, and I want more of it - especially if what I pay attention to in one service could help me find relevant information in another service.

Now, Microsoft plans to add a common RSS feed list and feed store to Longhorn, which means that instead of requesting feeds via HTTP, aggregators like FeedDemon would request them through Longhorn's RSS APIs - enabling Windows to find out what you're paying attention to. That sounds incredibly useful for developing personalized search, doesn't it?

And I'm actually fine with that, because I want personalized search. I want my attention data to help tools and services find the stuff that matters to me so I can cut down on information overload. But I only want this if:

It's done in a way that protects my privacy

The service that collects my attention data lets me get it back, so I can share it with other services

I've written about attention and privacy before, but I haven't really talked about the second point, which is where it gets tricky. Your attention data is very valuable to the services that collect it, so there's not a lot of incentive for them to give it back to you. But even though you're paying those services by giving them your attention data, that shouldn't mean that they own it. It's your data, and you should be able to share it with other services so that they can use it to make recommendations for you.

This isn't about Microsoft or any one company. I fully expect Gmail to add RSS aggregation, enabling Google to better understand what you're paying attention to so they can provide a more useful personalized search. Same goes for Yahoo and everyone else getting into the RSS business. See, I believe we've won the RSS battle and the next battle is for attention, and we should let everyone who hopes to gain from our attention data know that we want it back.

And that's what I'm asking you to blog about (or, if you don't have a blog, comment here). If you believe that you should own your attention data, now is the time to sound off about it. You don't need to link to me or even mention me in your blog - just make sure to include "RSS and Attention" in your entry's title so that everyone who pays attention to this subject (ie: Microsoft, Google, myself, etc.) can find you. I'm taking Microsoft at their word that they'll listen to the conversation while designing their RSS support, so let's test them on this.

Note: This is part of the battle that Steve Gillmor has been fighting for quite some time - it just took me a while to grok it :)

If you're a NewsGator Online user, you may have noticed this innocent looking folder hanging out under your clippings:

This new "My Podcasts" folder is where you store podcasts you want to listen to. Getting podcasts into this folder is easy - just click the new "Add to Podcasts" icon that appears below any item that contains an enclosure, like the one shown below:

Starting with the new beta, FeedStation will (optionally) poll your My Podcasts folder for new podcasts and automatically download them to your iPod or Windows Media Player device. Geek that I am, I love the idea that you can add to My Podcasts on one computer and have FeedStation on another computer, copying stuff to your iPod for you.

If you're new to FeedStation - or the whole podcasting thing in general - you'd probably like a little help getting started. The first thing you'll need is a set of feeds that contain podcast enclosures. If you're logged into NewsGator Online, just click the link below to import an OPML file containing several podcast feeds:

The first time you run FeedStation after downloading it, it will ask for your NewsGator Online user name and password and automatically enable the My Podcasts integration for you. However, you'll need to let FeedStation know which media player you want the podcasts copied to - to do this, select Tools > Options, then switch to the Podcasts tab. This page on my site provides the rest of the details.

Using FeedStation 1.6 with FeedDemon

If you're a FeedDemon user, upgrading the bundled copy of FeedStation to the new beta version is easy - just download and install it, and it will replace your existing version. Although you can click "Skip" on the welcome screen to use FeedStation without a NewsGator Online account, you'll obviously need an account if you want to try the My Podcasts integration.

Giving Due Credit

For almost a decade now I've been used to announcing things that I created by myself, but this time I'm announcing something that involved several of my NewsGator co-workers. So I'd like to acknowledge the late nights of development work by Darryl Dreiling and Doug Furcht, QA work by Katriana Hutchison and Ria Kaur, and oversight by Ed Jukkola that was required to make this happen. Nice job, folks :)

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

A while back I was talking with Chris Pirillo and Dave Winer about interesting things to do at Gnomedex this year, and we figured that since so many aggregator developers will be there, we should all get together for some sort of informal luncheon where people who use our software could ask us questions and make suggestions.

The idea went over well with several aggregator developers we spoke with, so it's official - according to the schedule, it's happening at noon on Saturday. As of right now, developers working on NetNewsWire, RSS Bandit, Rojo, Bloglines, Pluck and (of course) FeedDemon will be there, and the invitation is open to other aggregator developers.

I'll be leaving at the crack of dawn Thursday morning to fly to Seattle for the conference, and it looks like it's going to be quite an event - according to numerous sources, there will be some interesting announcements made there.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Due to a slew of trackback spam over the past few days, I've been forced to disable all trackbacks for this blog. I hope to re-enable them once TypePad comes out with their promised comment and trackback enhancements.
Update: I've re-enabled trackbacks based on feedback I received at Gnomedex (a number of people told me they miss the trackbacks).

Friday, June 17, 2005

Now that I've come up for air after my latest coding frenzy, I see that Brian Bailey has done something I should've done a long time ago: thank Dave Winer for his huge contributions to our syndicated world.

FeedDemon relies on RSS, OPML, weblogs, podcasting and SOAP - all of which were invented, co-invented or evangelized by Dave Winer. I'm having a blast developing FeedDemon, so thank you, Dave, for making my world a better a one.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

There's a good chance this will be among the stranger posts I've made to this blog. You see, I've just come off a drug-induced coding frenzy, the likes of which I've never seen before.

Now, I should explain that before you get the wrong idea. A few weeks ago I was diagnosed with sudden hearing loss (SHL), and my doctor prescribed a steroid called prednisone to treat it. Among prednisone's side effects is an abundance of manic energy and a decreased need for sleep - in other words, it was made for programmers. I've heard of people feverishly redecorating their houses while taking the stuff, but in my case I re-architected FeedDemon.

It started quite innocently. I was running into problems integrating with NewsGator's synchronization API due to the way I designed FeedDemon. FeedDemon works on a per-group basis, so that only feeds in the active channel group (folder) are displayed and updated. I chose this approach to keep memory and bandwidth consumption low, and also to avoid overwhelming users with a huge list of feeds, but unfortunately it has limited the degree of synchronization that FeedDemon can have with other RSS readers.

My plan was to change this in FeedDemon 2.0 several months from now, but I found myself with such a wealth of energy that I decided to expend some it by seeing how involved it would be to make the switch now. At first I made a few small changes, but before long I was coding like a madman, creating new classes, ripping out old code and building new components at a frenzied pace.

My first day of coding like this ended at 5:30AM. My second day started two hours later. By the end of the third day I had written well over 7,000 lines of new code and reworked thousands more. Stepping back at the end of it all and looking at what I had done reminded me of that scene in The Shining - you know the one, where Shelley Duvall's character discovers that her husband has filled an entire manuscript with the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." In my case, though, rather than write something nonsensical, I actually wrote some pretty fine code.

Because the changes touched upon so many areas of FeedDemon, I wasn't able to compile the code for the entire three days. So when I was done, I took a deep breath and tried compiling it. I'd love to say it worked right off the bat, but the truth is I had to make a few tweaks before it would compile without error. However, once it compiled it ran smoothly - I had completely recoded FeedDemon's foundation in three days, and I'll be damned if it didn't work!

At this point I haven't decided whether all these changes will be included in the upcoming FeedDemon 1.6 - I'll need to do a whole lot of testing before I decide that - but the end result of this coding marathon is that FeedDemon will have a slew of oft-requested features. In the short term the UI will continue to work on a per-group basis, so that you only view feeds in the active group, but feeds in inactive groups will update in the background. In addition, these changes will make it much easier to offer the folder-based UI that so many have asked for - expect to see this sooner than planned!

Oh, and here's how the story ends. A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Inc. Magazine for an article about software support, and they decided to send out a photographer to snap my picture. The photographer showed up at the tail end of the third day of coding, at which point I was long overdue for some serious sleep. I was so tired that I soon found smiling to be far too much effort, so I just kind of sat there like a mannequin and waited for it to end. So...if you happen to catch the article, think back to this post when you see the picture :)

Thursday, June 09, 2005

The first beta of TopStyle Pro 3.12 is now available to registered TopStyle customers. My apologies for taking so long to get this beta out - I had intended to release it a couple of months ago, but needed to delay it until the acquisition by NewsGator was completed.

Note that feedback on this beta should be posted in the TopStyle 3.12 BETA forum on NewsGator's site, so you'll need to register in NewsGator's forums to gain access. We had hoped we could simply import forum members from my site so that registration wouldn't be necessary, but unfortunately this turned out not to be possible.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Shortly after I announced that NewsGator had acquired my company, I started seeing comments from people wondering whether NewsGator was related to the "Gator" spyware company (now known as "Claria"). The answer, of course, is NO (you don't really think I'd join a spyware company, do you?).

NewsGator founder Greg Reinacker wrote about this problem a few months ago, and wondered whether a name change was in order to prevent the unintended association. But renaming a company isn't the simplest thing to do, and even if the rename took place, people would still refer to us as "the former NewsGator company," defeating the purpose.

Funny thing is, I had a similar post in my own blog last month, related to some people taking offense to the "demon" part of FeedDemon's name. Given the problems with both names, I think it's safe to say that if we ever rename the company, we won't choose the name "GatorDemon" :)